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CANTO I.]
HUDIBRAS.
25
For mystic learning wondrous able
In magic talisman, and cabal,[1] 530
Whose primitive tradition reaches,
As far as Adam's first green breeches:[2]
Deep-sighted in intelligences,
Ideas, atoms, influences;
And much of terra incognita, 535
Th' intelligible world could say; [3]
A deep occult philosopher,
As learn'd as the wild Irish are,[4]
Or Sir Agrippa, for profound
And solid lying much renown'd:[5] 540
- ↑ Talisman was a magical inscription or figure, engraved or cast by the direction of astrologers, under certain positions of the heavenly bodies, and thought to have great efficacy as a preservative from diseases and all kinds of evil. Cabal, or cabbala, is a sort of divination by letters or numbers: it signifies likewise the secret or mysterious doctrines of any religion or sect. In the time of Charles II. it obtained its present signification as being applied to the intriguing junto composed of Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale, the first letters of whose names form the word.
- ↑ The author of the Magia Adamica endeavours to prove, that the learning of the ancient Magi was derived from the knowledge which God communicated to Adam in paradise. The second line is a burlesque on the Genevan translation of the Bible, Genesis iii., which reads breeches, instead of aprons. In Mr Butler's character of an hermetic philosopher we read: "he derives the pedigree of magic from Adam's first green breeches; because fig-leaves, being the first covering that mankind wore, are the most ancient monuments of concealed mysteries."
- ↑ "Ideas, according to my philosophy, are not in the soul, but in a superior intelligible nature, wherein the soul only beholds and contemplates them." See Norris's Letter to Dodwell, on the Immortality of the Soul, p. 114. Nash. But it is more probable that Butler is alluding to Gabriel John's Theory of an Intelligible World, publ. London, 1700; a book which created much sensation at the time, and is supposed to have furnished Swift with some of his material.
- ↑ See the ancient and modern customs of the Irish, in Camden's Britannia, and Speed's Theatre of Great Britain.
- ↑ Agrippa was born at Cologne, ann. 1486, and knighted for his military services under the Emperor Maximilian. When very young, he published a book De Occulta Philosophia. which contains almost all the stories that ever roguery invented, or credulity swallowed, concerning the operations of magic. But in his riper years Agrippa was thoroughly ashamed of this book, and suppressed it in his collected works.
Delphi. Four-legg'd oracle probably means telling fortunes from quadrupeds.
